Day: June 25, 2013

Wow! This has become quite the challenge to understand my bill. Guess I was more than a little spoiled with my old provider. I don’t know if it is because I was with them so long that I just knew where everything was and what it meant or if I am just that dim that I can’t figure this bloody thing out.

So I log in the way I finally figured out how to get to my profile, consistently. So far, so good.

I look at the landing page and everything looks pretty good, I guess. Remember, I am a NEW CUSTOMER, so everything is still unfamiliar for me and finding what I want is mission critical to ensuring my satisfaction.

Cool! They show my current usage. I find this interesting, even though we have unlimited everything, save for the third line which is a data device we probably don’t need, but I wanted it anyway. I don’t really need to know how much data that line is using because we have barely turned it on. It is nice of my provider to give me this information. As a brand new user who has no need to monitor my usage, I am not really sure this needs to be quite so prominent, but I will leave that up to all of the fancy-schmancy designers out there who know more than I. I am pretty sure someone somewhere has done analysis and identified that this is the most important thing that most people should see.

Kind of annoying the fancy, splashy marketing message at the top of the page, followed by some random message about something that is being end of life’d the end of this month is in bright red across the top of the landing page. I don’t care enough to find out what it is, but I am sure there are people out there who do need to know, just notme. Neither the marketing message nor the warning message do anything for me. Quite frankly, in the best of all possible worlds I would be able to turn them off. (Keep dreaming!)

What I really want to do is look at my bill online. The paper bill with its 9 pages of ridiculously small print is doing my head in and I can’t make hide nor hair out of whether it is accurate. My thought is I should be able to log in and see the bill here. Then I will either increase the view size so I can make out all of the numbers without squinting. (I truly am fighting “11’s” and I prefer not to do anything to void all of that extra effort!) I consider this to be a reasonable expectation of a webpage set up for me to manage my account. Who knows? Maybe I am irrational in that expectation.

After reviewing all of the information about my usage, my eyes move to the right. I am American. I read from left to right. It would be cool to learn how to read another way, but I think I am too old to change my ways. Old dogs, new tricks kind of thing.

To my delight, the next fancy box has a large header labeled ‘My bill’. Phenomenal! This is what I am looking for. Points to the page designer. The box lists the amount due on my bill. The good part here is that it initially matched what my bill said. It is less now as I logged on the other day and made a payment on the equipment plan. Magically, that amount has been reduced from what shows in this box. At this point, I am a bit concerned as I think I may have messed things up by paying for the equipment purchase plan, but I couldn’t tell if it was included in the amount on my bill or not and I would prefer to overpay rather than be late on anything. (I don’t owe on anything other than my house, so I am not really familiar with purchase plans.)

The only thing that looks to be actionable is the big green button labeled ‘Pay my bill’. Well that would be really silly as when I logged in the other day, I scheduled a payment to be made the day before the due date, so why in the world would I want to pay my bill again? The funniest part, to me, is the message beneath the graph that shows how much my bill is confirms both the payment I made on the equipment plan and the payment scheduled. The fact that the button is green, inviting me to pay my bill again, seems a little odd given those messages. Regardless, there are teeny tiny little blue links that invite me to see my payment history or view the details of my scheduled payment. Neither one of those options seem to fit what I am trying to do.

To the right is another large box with a header labeled “My account activity”. It is nice to see that the most recent activity posted there matches what I did last – ‘New payment posted’ and matches the date that I put monies toward the equipment, so I am assuming that is the payment that posted. At the bottom of the listing it does provide me an option to view more activity, so I click that link to expand the view of my account activity. Marvelous! The list matches what I remember doing on this account. I expand the information in the top record on the list and it shows the payment I made the other day and automatically deducting it from the amount due on my bill. At this point, I am positive I have overpaid my bill for the month. I probably wouldn’t have done that if I had been able to decipher what I truly owed to keep me out of the dog house. Hey! This is where my budget before I started this little adventure really comes in handy!

Although all of this information is interesting, it is not relevant to the task at hand, which is figuring out how to see my bill online. It is obvious, I am not going to find what I want here, or I have completely missed the ‘quicklink’ that is appropriately positioned in the top third of the page so that I will go where marketing thinks I need to go. I am a NEW CUSTOMER. I do NOT wish to buy one more thing, at this time. Thank you very much. I need to see my bill.

Quick recap here:

So far, I have logged into the site I know how to get to the place I want to be to edit my profile. I know how to get here repeatedly.

I have viewed all of the marketing fanciness that splashes across my landing page. Really? Do I need this?

I have checked out every piece of information available in the three labeled boxes.

I have expanded the one that looked most promising, in my opinion.

I have failed to see my bill. I can tell you the gross usage information. But I still haven’t seen my bill online.

I could look at Usage. It is nice to have a drill down capability to see the details that I am paying for, but I would still like to understand how much I need to pay, so this doesn’t seem to be the best choice, given the options on the landing page and having failed looking at the account activity.

I choose to look at the box labeled ‘My bill’. I don’t want to push the button again as I have already scheduled my payment for this bill. On second review, I notice there is a tiny blue link beneath the great big green button. Low and behold, it says ‘View my bill’. Okay, so I just didn’t notice it before. Shiny objects and all. Reminder: Bright shiny object management theory applies to thyself!

Finally! I found how much I owe on my bill. Surprise, surprise, it actually matches what was printed on the ugly paper copy I received in the mail, but better organized.

As a NEW CUSTOMER – I think the real estate given to try and upsell me could be better used to provide me some of the hints and suggestions that appear as Quick tasks. We are adults with unlimited plans. I really don’t care about restricting the plans in any way, although I am sure there are people who do need this upfront.

I am thrilled at making it this far. I may never need to try and read that paper bill, ever again! Even better! I found the option to print from here! Yay! A read only copy of my bill. This looks so much better than the paper bill I received in the mail, it is ridiculous! SUCCESS! Now I can read the bill without squinting and if I decide to print it, I have better paper!